


The Other Fifty-One

by crossingwinter



Series: Irresponsible Storytelling [19]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Minor Pairing: Alexander x Eliza, Minor Pairing: Philip x Theodosia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 19:36:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5346110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hamilton tumblr ficlets.  Ships will be tagged in the free-form tags section/in the title of each "chapter".  Ratings will vary; may be wildly AU; may be wildly canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. quiet uptown (Eliza)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/gifts), [PrioritiesSorted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/gifts).



_eliza do you like it uptown? it’s quiet uptown._

she cannot bear the quiet.  it had been bad enough after philip, and now–

silence is a ghost, both of their ghosts, all of their ghosts.  philip, alexander, peggy and her stubborn refusal to be the baby.  

 _i don’t like the quiet, alexander._ she never had–not when it had been his words she’d fallen in love with, written on a page, spoken in her ear, shouted to the world.  it had only been bearable after philip had died because he’d been there, asking if she liked the quiet.


	2. "Does it have to be Burr, Philip?" (Philip x Theodosia)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for politicalmamaduck

“Does it have to be  _Burr_ , Philip?”

“I love her.”  It’s as simple as that.  Alexander sighs.  He doesn’t really know Theodosia Burr, just that at some point, his son had stopped prowling like a feral tom cat and had started spending all his time with Aaron Burr’s daughter.

And it wasn’t as though he had a problem with the girl.  She was perfectly intelligent, kind, graceful, thoughtful, pretty.  It was more that if Philip married Theodosia Burr…

He glanced in at the restaurant where he can already see Burr and Theodosia sitting, talking quietly together.  Is Burr…smiling?  He didn’t know that Burr  _could_  smile.  Maybe the girl was a miracle worker.  He sighs.

“Come on, Alexander,” Eliza says, taking his arm and prodding him forward.  

The only small comfort that Alexander can take as he walks forward is that Burr’s own expression of discomfort is a match for his own.  


	3. i play piano and everybody cries (Angie)

the house is quiet, and angie hates it.  they’re all quiet, even though coming home from church is usually a bustle of noise, her father expounding under his about whatever was wrong with what the pastor had said, her mother trying to get eliza holly and william fed before the rest of them sit down for lunch.  and philip…

angie swallows, hoping the lump in her throat will go away this time.

it doesn’t.

philip would play piano.  he’d play bach suites, or just make things up, changing melodies of the pieces he’d studied with mother because he’d make them better.  he could always make everything better.

except  _this_.  she feels her lips trembling.  she wants to cry, but she’s spent days–weeks–crying and maybe she’s broken.  maybe she’ll never stop.  he was supposed to fix things.  that’s what he’d been trying to do–trying to make whatever mr. eacker had said go away, make him take it back. he hadn’t been supposed to… to…

angie looks at the piano.  it’s by the window in the sitting room.  there’s sheet music on the stand for james and john to practice when they come home from school.  

she hears her siblings’ footsteps, the rustling of papers from her father’s office, the swish of her mother’s skirts, but not a word above a whisper.  it’s too quiet.  she’s the oldest now and it’s too quiet.

angie crosses the sitting room and sits down, and tries to think of something that she can play, but it’s like she’s forgotten everything–all preludes and fugues and everything.  so she plays the first thing that comes into her head, tears dripping down her face.

_un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf_

__un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf_ _


	4. letters burned (eliza; alexander x eliza)

-i-

she burns his first letter first.  it’s fitting.  fitting because that’s the letter where she felt like her heart would beat so fast it would bust right out of her chest.  that was the letter that  _proved_  to her that it was more than just a dance, that it wasn’t just a boy who had smiled and that her heart wasn’t twisting her mind.

 _yours, alexander_  he had signed it.

_i thought you were mine._

and into the fire it goes.

-ii-

_i’m just saying if you really loved me you would share him._

_ha!_

how she’d laughed at angelica.  how she’d clutched his words to her chest and let them burn right through her.   _hers hers hers_  he’d been.   _eliza, you’ve lit something inside me, made the world so bright i hadn’t known it was dark before–_

_dearest, sweetest alexander, it is the same for me_

no, it hadn’t been.  not in the end.  she’d been true, and he…he’d given his love to someone else, as if it had been nothing, as if it hadn’t been worth anything at all.

 _you’ve lit something inside me…_ she feeds the flame.

-iii-

_george says that history has its eyes on me, so i hope, for the sake of the historians reading these letters in some grand archive that you are aware that this woman–eliza schuyler hamilton–holds the keys to my heart, and i know that they are safe there, for i have been blessed with the best wife._

he gave her keys away, though, hadn’t he?  she’d kept his safe and he’d unlocked everything for the world to come inside and  _damn_ these historians and  _history has it’s eyes on you_  she is  _not_  some footnote in alexander’s life–an explanation of the reynolds pamphlet and how he’s never going to be president now.  

she is more than that, isn’t she?  isn’t she?

and another turns to ash before her eyes.

-iv-

she doesn’t even look at the letter he wrote her that summer.  she can’t bear to read it.  had he been in her arms when he’d done it?

-v-

_you have married an icarus–he has flown to close to the sun._

the sun melted the wax that held icarus’ wings together.  as the letters burn, does it melt away the last of their love?  had there ever truly been love?  or had it just been words.  so many words, her alexander.

no, not  _her_ alexander.

just alexander.

alexander.


	5. you and i can go when the night gets dark... (alexander x eliza)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for queerparisgellar

“come on, eliza.”

“ _alex_ , but if someone  _sees!”_

 _“_ well, i can safely say there are worse things that could possibly happen than that.”

“name one.”

“jefferson becoming president.”

eliza shudders.  the stars are twinkling overhead, and the moon is full.  if someone  _does_  come…

“come  _on_  eliza–i have to go back to the city soon and get this plan through congress.”

“alexander, we’re not children anymore.  speaking of–”

“don’t worry about the children.  angelica is more than capable.  it’s so _hot_  eliza.  come swimming with me.”  he’s already stripping off his jacket and waistcoat, and fiddling with his belt and before she can even say another word, her husband is strolling completely naked towards the lake and wading into it.

“it’s so squishy,” he calls to her.

“hardly an enticement,” she responds, raising her eyebrows.

“not unpleasant,” he adds.  “just squishy.”

“you know, when i said–”

“you and i can go when the night gets dark,” he parrots at her.

“yes, that, i meant a romantic stroll in the moonlight.”

“and you’ve been married to me how long now?” he teases.  he’s standing in the water about waist deep, his chest glowing in the moonlight.  “besides–i don’t believe that for a second.  you were imagining some sort of stolen moment in the dark–perhaps behind a bush, or against a tree, or–a ha!  see?  you’re blushing.  i knew it.“

she looks around.  there’s no one there.  there rarely is after dark.  that’s why she’d  _wanted_  to come here.  he wasn’t wrong…not exactly, she’d just never for a moment thought that this would end up…quite like this.  she sighs.  

“there’s no one here but you and me, eliza,” he says, and his voice is lower now.  he’s trying a different tactic.  she smiles, and sighs.  

“you already got in the water.  it’ll be hard to get out of this on my own,” she complains.  she’s wearing an old dress of hers–hardly in fashion.  but they’re in the country and she likes this old blue thing.  

“i can–” he says eagerly, moving towards her.

“you’ll get it all wet.”

“we’ll give it time to dry,” he says and he emerges from the water, dripping.  when she’d first seen him naked, how she’d flushed.  he’d been muscled and slim.  he was still slim, though the muscle had faded, the sacrifices one makes when a war is over and one joins the cabinet, she supposes.  she doesn’t flush now, though he’s dripping water from his cock as he strides towards her.  if anything, she bites back amusement as she turns so he can unlace her.  his lips find her neck as she feels the bodice loosen around her.  

“beautiful,” he whispers when she steps out of the dress pooling at her ankles, and she smiles at him and takes his hand.  

“hardly as beautiful as i used to be,” she says, modestly.  it’s true.  four children have taken their toll on her once flat stomach.  in the moonlight, she can’t hide the fat, or the dark colored tendrils that criss cross her stomach.  it feels more obvious in the moonlight than ever it does when they’re at home in their bed.  

“i disagree,” he says and it almost sounds like he’s going to launch into a debate, but he kisses her neck again.  “that’s our family right there.  that’s you and me.  that’s beautiful.”  his hands rest on her stomach for just a moment, and she turns and presses herself against him, her lips finding his.  

the water is cool against her skin when they reach the edge of the lake, and she sighs as she walks into it, hissing slightly when the water hits her hips, and then her breasts.  “see?” alexander says, swimming towards her.  “better than this muggy air, isn’t it?”

“better than that muggy city, isn’t it?” she shoots back, and he laughs.  “to think i had to drag you here kicking and screaming.”

“i was hardly kicking and screaming.”

“you were worse than james alexander when he’s at his most petulant.” alexander gasps in mock outrage, and eliza swims towards him and he’s holding her again, and her hands cup his cheeks as he kisses her, and he moan a little as she wraps her legs around his hips.

there’s nothing like summer in the country, the quiet of the breeze in the trees, the lapping of the lake against the shore and the little sounds eliza and alexander make together beneath the stars.


	6. old friends

“A Sam Adams for the gentleman.” Alex doesn’t know which is more surprising: that someone is buying him a drink, calling him a gentleman, or that voice is one he recoginzes, even if he hasn’t heard in so long. Suddenly, he is nineteen again, and friendless. He almost laughs. Most of his friends are fleeing his side now.

“Mr. Mulligan,” he says without listening.

“Gone and done it again, haven’t you, Alex?” Alexander finally looks over his shoulder. Hercules is bigger than he had been during the war. If Alex has lost his muscle, he’s at least stayed fairly trim; Hercules is positively round. Alex can’t remember the last time he saw him.

“You could say,” he says. “It needed to be said.”

“Of course it did,” his voice is neutral. The spy’s voice, John had once called it.  He doesn’t know if he likes it now. Better, he supposes, than the glares and than Eliza’s tears and Angelica’s cold fury.

“You’ve been well?” Alex asks quickly. “I’m sorry, I’ve been–”

“Doing what you do,” Hercules says, shrugging. “You were always going to rise up higher than me. Doing well for myself, though.” He gives Alex a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.  

“We should have you around for dinner,” he says, feeling guilty. He feels guilty about so much these days. “My son’s finishing up at King’s soon.”

“Little Philip? Time goes, doesn’t it.”

Alexander smiles fondly. “It does,” he agrees.  

“You and Eliza find a night and I’ll be by,” Hercules says, and Alexander frowns for half a heartbeat. Hercules sighs and drinks a sip of his Sam Adams. “She’s not talking to you, is she?”

Alex glances around. The tavern is hardly full, and the barman is out of earshot.  _You are paranoid in every paragraph_. “About the children, and the day to day. But not much else.”

“You had to have seen that coming,” Hercules says.

He shakes his head. “If I had, I’d have warned her.”

“But still done it?”

“I had to,” Alex says. “I–”

“Of course you did,” Hercules says. “‘I’d rather be divisive than indecisive.’”  
Alex had forgotten he’d said that.

“Haven’t changed much, have I?” he almost laughs and takes a sip. It tastes like late nights, just the four of them. Now John’s gone, and god only knows when he’ll see Lafayette again. He’ll understand won’t he? _Jefferson is wrong._

Hercules understands. It sends a chill up his spine and he looks at his old friend again. “More set in your ways, for good or bad,” Hercules says. “You still got that heart though?”

I think so. He thinks of Philip, and the rest of the children. “I try to.”

Hercules takes another drink. “Then you’ll pull through. You always do.”

If he’d had another drink in him, perhaps he’d feel his throat tighten. A moment of kindness, if understanding, even if he can hear Hercules’ conflictedness.    
They sit quietly for a while, their drinks disappearing slowly. And for the first time in ages, Alex doesn’t feel as though he needs to say anything at all.


	7. I did exactly as you said, pop

_I did exactly as you said, pop._

What had he said? Not the bit with the gun. Whatever it was that made Mr. Eacker say whatever he’d said, to make Philip do what he’d done. _I would not have let it slide. Let it slide…_

He hears birds chirping. Downstairs he hears Angie playing piano. She has been playing since he died. Playing, and not speaking, and Eliza’s eyes are red with tears, and when his prayers to god are met with indifference…

 _I did this._ It’s all he can think. Over and over again, words spinning in his head. Usually he can make a song of the words, but now he just hears Philip’s coughing and _be smart, make me proud son._

_Alexander, did you know?_

_Yes, Eliza I knew. But I didn’t_ know _. If I’d known I would have told him–save your strength and stay alive.  Live to fight another day._ He always learned too late.  _You know why Jefferson can do what he wants? He doesn’t dignify schoolyard taunts with a response so yeah, congratulations…_

_You’ve redefined your legacy–It was me he was fighting for. We’ll bleed and fight for you._

_Congratulations. For the rest of your life…_

He hates his memory, sometimes. Hates it.  Everything is clear as a crystal–John’s laughter, Lafayette’s stalwartness, the way that Philip, all of two weeks old, had clutched at his finger and put it in his mouth, thinking perhaps that it was Eliza’s breast, or maybe just knowing he was father and you put father’s fingers in your mouth and nothing bad would come of it. It was not the barrel of a gun, and death did not wait on the other end.

John had once said that he’d thought of putting a gun in his mouth. Alex hadn’t thought he could ever be so scared that something might happen–not until he heard Philip gasping and counting and Eliza sobbing and collapsing and…

_My fault. All my fault. I did exactly as you said pop. I held my head up high. Philip your mother can’t take another heartbreak._

It breaks her.  He sees it in her eyes.  It breaks her that Philip’s gone.  It breaks him too.  At least they are broken together.  At least he has that.  He’d always been so good at pulling himself back together again.  At adjusting, and fighting, and winning and now–defeat.  Plain and simple defeat, something he can’t come back from.   _For the rest of your life…give her the best life._

He wonders if Angelica blames him for this.  She should.  They all should.  He blames himself most of all.  Perhaps his father had been right–everyone was better off without him.  That was why he’d left, hadn’t he?

He looks at Eliza.   _I’ve been living without a family since I was a child,_ he’d told her, back when her eyes still sparkled at the sight of him.   _The memory of when you were mine._ Now he’s living without a child though he still has a family.   _So quick witted._ He hates it now most of all.  If he’d been so quick witted, he’d have been able to do something, wouldn’t he?  He always could do something, when he put his mind to it.  Whatever it was that he wanted, he could get it done.  Except now.  Except for Philip, who mattered most.   _And I thought I was so smart._

When she looks at him with empty eyes, the cold fury is gone, Maria Reynolds’ shadow is gone.  She’s not warm, but she’s warming.  He knows he doesn’t deserve her, but when she’s with him, he’s not completely alone with his thoughts.  They walk together, arm in arm through the park as the sun sets, listening to the leaves rustle. “It’s quiet uptown,” she whispers to him and he knows he’s forgiven. Eliza forgives him for something that doesn’t matter anymore, and he will never forgive himself the only thing that does.


	8. Congratulations

The front door opens downstairs, and Eliza hears footsteps.  She doesn’t go downstairs.  Undoubtedly someone new for Alexander.  All the callers were for Alexander.  Some had come for Eliza, but she’d turned them away.  She couldn’t bear to look at her friends right now.  She couldn’t bear to look at anyone.  

She is reading—scanning, searching in every line of his letters.  Every word is like a knife in her gut.  They’d been so young.  So young, she realizes.  How many children had she given him?  How many nights curled in bed together, listening to him talking about everything—about the cabinet battles, about how much work he had to do, how if people only listened to him, everything would be fine.  Those words, and these words on the paper in her hand…the voice is the same.  Somewhat.  Youthful ardor having grown into a mature passion…so unlike the words in the pamphlet, and yet that had been his voice too.  Somehow.  Alien.  Distant.  Her Alexander, who wasn’t hers anymore, who hadn’t been always the way he’d promised on one winter’s evening when she’d been so young. 

“You know why Jefferson can do what he wants?  He doesn’t dignify schoolyard taunts with a _response_ , so yeah, congratulations!”  Eliza stiffens.  

 _Angelica_?  

It is.  

It’s Angelica.  All the way from London.  She feels paper fall from between her fingers as Angelica continues to—

Angelica had never called it yelling when they’d been girls.  She’d called it gusto.  Speaking loudly and passionately, but not yelling.  But she’s definitely yelling now.  “You’ve redefined your legacy! Congratulations!”  And nothing makes Alexander rise quite like an attack.  Eliza squeezes her eyes shut, waiting to hear the words she’d heard how many times now as other Federalists had come over, demanding to know why— _why_ —he’d done it, why he’d fallen on the sword and he was their only good viable candidate for president and he’d gone and made himself unelectable.  

“It was an act of political sacrifice!”

She hears nothing.  Oh _no_ , she thinks.  Angelica only gets quiet when she’s this furious if she’s going in for the kill.  She gets to her feet and hurries to the door, leaving Alexander’s letter son the floor.  Once she’d rushed downtown to keep him from slaughtering Burr in his rage when he’d learned that Burr was running against her father, but this time it’s time to protect him from Angelica.   _He doesn’t deserve it_ , she thinks angrily, then almost laughs.   _But it would be hard to explain the blood on the carpets._

“I’m not here for you,” she hears Angelica say quietly as she reaches the landing, and she freezes.

“I know my sister like I know my own mind you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind.”  Eliza’s eyes prickle, and her throat tightens and she raises a hand to her neck.  “And a million years ago, she said to me, ‘this one’s mine’ so I stood by.”  Eliza stops breathing.   _I stood by_.  She…she…  “Do you know why?”  

When they’d been little girls together, Angelica had helped her pick the right books to read, had introduced her to her friends and never once let her feel silly for being younger and less clever when age seemed to matter in the society of children.  And Angelica had danced with Alexander first at that winter’s revel and had spoken to him, and had smiled and laughed and had brought him to Eliza because she’d asked.  Because she’d asked. She could have easily not have done it, but she had.  Eliza would have been fine.  She would have been, but…  

Angelica’s voice crashes over her like a wave, and she’s sure that Alexander must be drowning in it.  “I love my sister more than _anything in this life_ I will choose her happiness over mine, every time!”  There it is.   _She was unhappy in London.  She told me so.  And I was so happy.  I was so…_  “Eliza! Is the best thing in our lives.  So never lose sight of the fact that you have been _blessed_ with the _best_ wife!”  

There are tears in her eyes now, and she’s leaning against the bannister fighting to keep them in her eyes.  She has wept enough of late, she doesn’t need to cry now.  But it’s a different sort of tears.  Those tears had been betrayal—how could Alexander do that, how could he care so little for her, for _them?_   These are relief.  Angelica was her shield.  She always had been.  And she still was. How much she cared for Alexander—and, Lord, she had loved him, those jokes about the harem—didn’t matter because Angelica loved, still loves, will always love her.  And somehow, she’s sure, every visitor Alexander has had hasn’t dared bring up that he’s broken her heart.

“Congratulations,” her sister shouts, “For the rest of your life, every sacrifice you make is for my sister, give her the best life.  Congratulations.”  

Angelica marches out of the sitting room and she looks up the stairs and her eyes lock with Eliza’s.  That’s when the tears she’s tried so hard to keep at bay spill out of her eyes, and Angelica’s hurrying up the stairs, taking them two at a time and Eliza’s in her sister’s arms again, just like when she was a girl and Anne Wilson had been making fun of her braids again and Angelica had made Anne regret that.  Angelica is here.  The world’s turned upside down, and Eliza’s not sure she’ll ever be happy again, but Angelica is here, and Angelica loves her more than anything and anyone and for the moment, that is all she needs.

 


	9. There'll Be More Of Us

> _Except for James McHenry, Hamilton’s friends on Washington’s staff were too busy with wartime duties to attend.  For all the merriment and high spirits, few guests could have overlooked the mortifying contrast between the enormous Schuyler clan, with their Van Cortlandt and Van Rensselaer relatives, and the lonely groom, who didn’t have a single family member in attendance. (Chernow, p. 148)_

Eliza has a large family.  He’s known about that for a while now, but it still hits him hard enough to blast him off his feet when he turns away from the minister to see them all sitting there, watching him, wondering who this bastard orphan is and how on earth he wormed his way into Philip Schuyler’s home.  He’s not going to think about that though.  He looks back at Eliza with her warm, dark eyes, then looks out into the crowd of gathered well wishers.

Laurens is far away, Hercules couldn’t come lest he blow his cover, and LaFayette is staffing Washington while Alex gets married.   _I never had a group of friends before_ , he thinks, and he looks back at Eliza.  Or a real family.  He imagines their smiles, their teasing.  Laurens clapping him on the shoulder, LaFayette drinking a little too much, Hercules poking fun at the skirt chaser who found himself married to someone so trusting and wholesome…

 _I may not live to see our glory_ , he can hear Laurens teasing, but I’ve seen wonders great and small… Alex pulls a smile on his face, friendly, almost bashful because that’s the face a groom makes when being teased, isn’t it?  He looks at Angelica and Peggy, both dressed prettily.   _Your favorite_ older _sister,_ Angelica had said when Peggy had claimed the title of favorite sister with the force of a younger sister.  A sister where he had only had brothers before… He thinks of James somewhere in the Caribbean, and his father who had not made the journey, whether from lack of means or excess shame he did not know. His arm tightens around his bride’s waist.  

Bride.  Family.  Sisters.  

 _There’s hope for our ass after all,_ teases the John in his head.

And friends.  

_Something they can never take away…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While reading Chernow, I just was struck by how sad the change between the historical and the musical was, so I made the bit in the musical happen in Hamilton's head. And got sad.


End file.
